UPDATE: Report confirmed as hoax, Link to BB update.
Widespread debate today over whether the South Coast Today story "DHS visits student over Little Red Book" is a hoax, or contains unsubstantiated non-facts. But the reporter who filed it maintains otherwise; update and details at bottom of this post.
A Massachussetts paper is reporting that a college student was visited by Department of Homeland Security agents in October after requesting a copy of Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung — better known as "The Little Red Book" — from a university library:
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.
The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.
The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.
Link to news report.
Attention, comrades! Subversive cesspool Amazon.com sells copies of this watchlisted terrorist manual. Here's the link where you can buy a copy before you invite the DHS over for eggnog. (Thanks, Nat, and the approximately ten gajillion other fellow travelers who suggested this item.)
Reader comment: Glenn Fleishman says,
Not that this excuses the government's action, but, in fact may chill us further: the student requested "the official Peking version." So it's not JUST he asked for Mao's book, but rather he asked for original source material (an authorized, unabridged translation into English).
Reader comment: Michael Benveniste says,
1. UMass Dartmouth does not use SSN's for student ID's. An interlibrary loan request by SSN would seem to violate the University's own privacy policies (Link).
2. The reporter has not talked to the student. He has talked to the professors, who told him what the student claimed happened. The professors have no first hand knowledge of the incident.
3. It seems a little unlikely that UMass Dartmouth wouldn't have the Little Red Book on Campus.[Ed.: see below]4. The professors only "went public" with the story in response to a query about domestic wiretapping.
I think it's at least equally likely that the student made up an excuse for not doing some work, and that the professors bought into it enough to advance their own agenda.
Reader comment: Nicolas D. P. says:
UMass Darmouth does not in fact have an unabridged version of the little red book on campus as far as their library system can tell: Link
UPDATE: Speculation growing that the whole thing's a hoax. A post on the Librarian and Information Science News blog says:
There is now another version of this story about a Dartmouth student who received a visit from Homeland Security after requesting an original version of Mao's Little Red Book. The latest version takes place at University of California/Santa Cruz and mentions History Professor Bruce Levine. I emailed Levine to see if he could verify the story, but my email was the first he'd heard about it. He was a bit amused, as his specialty is Civil War history, and curious about his name got tacked on to the story. ALA's Public Information Office is digging into the story as well. More details as they become available!
UPDATE: Standard-Times reporter Aaron Nicodemus, who wrote the news report in question, responds to allegations that the U.Mass incident is a hoax, and to "copycat" reports of DHS visits to student(s) at another college in California:
The UCSC story is a fake, someone merely replaced the names of the
professors I quoted and took the story as his own.But my story, published in The Standard-Times on Saturday, Dec. 17,
is real and is factual to the extent I reported.I am trying to
convince the student to come forward, and for the university library
loan system to come clean about its involvement, and of course, for
the Department of Homeland Security to admit it visited the student.I hope to have an update published soon.
(Thanks, Jason Schultz)
UPDATE: Jessamyn West says,
I maintain the website librarian.net. I'm also an elected memeber of the Council of the American Library Association. We've been going back and forth on this issue for most of the day. Here is what we know.
1. I emailed with the reporter. He claims the story about the UCSC library is copied form his, that his is the original and cites the two professors as sources. He says that he has been trying to get the student to come forward to tell his story. Link
2. the book does not come from UMass Dartmouth, that is why it needed to be ILL'ed. The library belongs to a consortium and the copy of the book [that the agents brought to the student's house… I know, sounds fishy to me too] was from a library in nearby Providence, not part of Dartmouth's virtual catalog. Link
In any case, I think the jury is still out, Lots of parts of the newspaper story don't add up BUT the reporter is contactable and so is at least one of the two professors who has been cited in the article [my emails to the second professor have not yet been returned] which is not the case withe the bizarre reprinting of the story with a West Coast school implanted in it. Council has been sort of paying attention to this issue, so more may turn up on the listserv as the day goes on. Link
UPDATE: An anonymous reader says,
This is from the blog maintained by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), who are the folks who know the most about anything going on with college or university libraries. UMass Dartmouth issued a statement providing reassurance that the library did not participate in violating the student's rights. The student requested the book through another library, not UMass Dartmouth's. The author of the blog entry checked UMass Dartmouth's ILL form and discovered it doesn't ask for social security number. Link.
